In the Blood (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  You’ve been living just to kill this bastard for decades for what he did to you! The Other’s dark voice snarled inside her head. And look at you! Cringing like a whipped dog offering up its throat! Let me out! Let me out, woman, before he kills us all!

  “You’re trembling...” Morgan’s voice was close to her ear, his breath billowing forth in a mildewed cloud. “Are you as excited as I am?”

  “Don’t touch me!” Suddenly she was free and the switchblade was in her hand. She swiped blindly in his direction, only to have Morgan kick the weapon out of her hand.

  “How dare you use silver against me?” he snarled, clearly unnerved by her ability to break free of his control.

  “I’m not one of your pedigreed lap dogs, Morgan,” Sonja replied defiantly. “I’m not to roll over and die simply because you tell me to! I was born in the gutter and raised on the street—and this bitch ain’t afraid to bite!”

  “I was toying with the idea of breaking your will and allowing you to continue as one of my harem,” Morgan hissed angrily. “But I see now you’re too dangerous to keep, even as a pet!” His voice dropped, becoming an inhuman growl as he threw wide his arms, his eyes rolling back in its socket.

  Sonja recognized the ritual stance used by Nobles in psychic combat, and followed suit, falling inside herself in time to meet Morgan on a field of battle known only as the Place Between Places.

  There was darkness and light. There was up and down in all directions. Morgan’s imago hung suspended in the nothingness, its features unmarred, dressed in the silk and samite of a medieval prince. His eyes burned like polished garnet and flames licked from between his lips. His hands cupped balls of black energy that smoldered like a malignant St. Elmo’s Fire.

  “Is that the best you can do, rogue?” he sneered contemptuously, motioning to his opponent’s self-image.

  Sonja looked down at herself. Save for her leather jacket looking brand-new, there was no appreciable difference between her imago and her physical self.

  “What difference does it make?” she replied with a shrug. “We’re all naked inside our heads.”

  In reply, a tiger with three heads and the tail of a scorpion jumped out of Morgan’s chest. Sparks flew from its gnashing teeth as its heads roared in unison. It pounced, knocking Sonja onto her back. As the chimera’s fangs closed on its victim’s face, the Other began to laugh.

  Howell and Palmer stared at the lock on the door to the secret laboratory began to glow, quickly going from bright red to white-hot within a matter of seconds. The odor of roasting flesh was overpowering.

  “Is there another way out of here?” Palmer asked anxiously.

  The scientist nodded. “There’s a trapdoor that leads directly to the nucleus.” He pointed to floor under the dissection table.

  “What are we waiting for?” Palmer yelped, grabbing Dr. Howell by the arm. “If that’s what I think it is on the other side of that door, you don’t want to be here to tell it hello!”

  To his surprise, Howell yanked his arm free of his grip. “I already told you I’m a dead man, Mr. Palmer!” he explained. “I’m better off dying at the hands of Morgan’s servants than falling back into his clutches.”

  Before Palmer could argue any further, the door flew open, its lock and handle reduced to warm taffy. The pyrotic stepped into the room, sizzling in its own fat. Palmer dove under the dissection table and peered down the trapdoor. All he could see was a rickety ladder disappearing into the darkness below. Hardly the stairway to heaven, but it would do. If the scientist wanted to purge his sins in a one-sided battle with the burning man sent to fetch him, more power to him.

  “So, the Renfields sent you in their stead, eh, Hot Stuff?” Howell said with a humorless laugh as he picked up a large, wickedly curved knife from the tray of instruments next to the dissecting table. “Well, I’m not going back! You’re going to have to kill me!”

  As the blind pyrotic moved toward Howell, smoke rising from its ears and nostrils like steam from a kettle, its arm struck jar containing the unborn changeling. There was the sound of glass breaking, followed by Howell screaming unintelligible obscenities.

  The monstrous fetus struck the floor of the attic, mewling piteously as it flopped about helplessly like a landed baby shark. As Palmer disappeared down the trapdoor, the last thing he saw was Dr. Howell drive the blade he was holding into the pyrotic’s stomach, slitting it from crotch to throat as easily as he might carve a roasted turkey. The pyrotic opened its mouth to scream, but all that came out was the hiss of live steam a sinuous serpent-shape made of smoke and fire, like the bearded dragons wrapped about Chinatown’s luck gate, uncoiled from the its slit gullet, consuming the hapless scientist in a wall of living flame.

  The chimera squatted atop her chest, its stinger dripping poison as its triple set of jaws gnashed and snarled. Suddenly its threatening roars quickly turned into yelps of confusion and fear as the beast began to sink into its would-be victim, as if sucked into quicksand. As she got to her feet, the chimera’s oversized scorpion’s tail was still whipping madly about as it was absorbed into her torso. Her eyelids fluttered as she consumed the avatar, making its dark energy her own.

  She lashed out at her attacker in retaliation, striking out with her will as if it was a bullwhip. There was a sound like the sonic boom of a low-flying jet, as pearls of blood began to appear on Morgan’s brow in place of sweat. In response, something that looked like an ape with long, spidery arms and fungus-gray fur, pulled itself free of his torso. With a high-pitched squeal, the avatar launched itself at her, sinking its claws into her face, only to emit an ultrasonic shriek as first its wrist, then its elbow, disappeared into her imago.

  Realizing it was in danger of being absorbed, the avatar screeched and jettisoned its right arm before leaping free. Clutching the stump of its right shoulder, the beast loped back to Morgan, where it cowered at his feet.

  “I knew you were powerful, but I had no idea you possessed such will!” Morgan scowled as he gathered the wounded avatar back into himself. “It has been a long time since I’ve been challenged this way. I’m still going to kill you, of course. But I appreciate the exercise.”

  A tentacle burst from Morgan’s chest, whipping about his head like a rodeo star’s trick lariat. Two more emerged from his sides, quickly wrapping themselves around Sonja’s arms and legs, binding them to her body. Morgan laughed as the final tentacle dropped about her neck like a hangman’s noose. She hissed as the coils tightened, only to have it grow into a yowl of agony as thousands of tiny needle-filled mouths began working at her dream-flesh…

  And suddenly she was no longer in the Place Between Places, but back in the waking world. She was lying on the Persian rug on the library floor, curled into a fetal ball at Morgan’s feet. Or was she? She was unsure if she was truly awake or merely dreaming that she was, as she could still feel the hideous mouths lining the tentacles that bound her imago tearing at her psyche. She looked up and saw Morgan squatting over her like a gargoyle perched on the cornice of a cathedral. His eyes were rolled so far back in his head he looked like a marble statue.

  The Other’s voice abruptly sounded in her inner ear, seeming far more frightened than she’d ever heard it before. Don’t just lay there snorting dust bunnies! Kill him! Kill him before he realizes he’s fighting me instead of you!

  Sonja blinked in surprise as she realized what the Other meant. She had to move fast and strike at Morgan’s physical body before he realized he was being tag-teamed. Her fingers were cold and numb as she fumbled in her pockets for her switchblade, only to find them empty. Then she remembered the vampire lord had kicked it out of her hand. But where had it landed—?

  As she frantically searched the room, she finally spied the switchblade lying in the hearth, inches from the roaring fire. Marshaling all her strength, she forced herself to crawl in the direction of the fireplace. Although Morgan’s control over her physical self had disappeared, it still felt as if the marrow in her bones h
ad been replaced with lead as she slowly, painfully, inched her way toward the knife.

  In the Place Between Places, Morgan tightened his grip on his enemy’s imago. Although the flesh and bone he was grinding into paste was illusory, the pain it generated was very, very real.

  “Do you know what happens to a body once its imago is destroyed, little one?” he asked as he lifted her over his head. “It’s like performing a lobotomy on the soul.”

  “Like I have one to destroy!” she snarled, spitting a streamer of blood into his right eye. Suddenly pain the color of an exploding sun filled her senses as the mouths lining the tentacles began to feed in earnest. The more she struggled, the tighter the coils grew, but it was not in her nature to surrender, so the agony continued to escalate.

  Morgan drew this captive enemy toward him, tilting her so that she dangled inches from his face. “You are so exquisitely lethal, my dear! I know you do not believe me, but I will mourn you, in my way. Had things been different between us, I would have made you my queen. We could have spent the coming centuries happily grinding our enemies beneath our heels. But there is no point regretting something that can never be. I promise I will make it quick if you tell me where you’ve hidden the breeder’s get.”

  “Screw you.”

  The tentacles knotted themselves even tighter, grinding her internal organs to jelly paste. Blood began to ooze from her nostrils, tear ducts, and ears.

  “Tell me where the child is! It belongs to me! I am entitled to the fruit of my endeavor!”

  “Why? So you can build a race of living vampires?” she sneered. “You don’t even know what you’ve created, do you? Anise’s child isn’t a vampire, you stupid fucker!”

  “What is it, then?” he snapped.

  “It’s a seraph!”

  “You lie!” Morgan thundered, slamming her against a nothingness that was somehow as hard as concrete.

  “You should see your face!” she laughed between fits of choking on her own blood. “What’s the matter, dead boy? Soil your pants?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Make me!”

  “Damn you, Sonja!”!

  The Other’s blood-smeared face split into a wide, sharp grin. “Wrong again.”

  Sonja’s fangs sliced into her lower lip as she dragged the switchblade out of the fireplace embers. She could feel the blisters rise in the palm of her hand and hear her skin sizzle as she wrapped her fingers around its white-hot hilt. As she turned back to face Morgan, she saw his eyes drop back down, like the reels in a slot machine, shining with rage. With a roar of anger, he lunged, grabbing at her legs, and the façade of sophisticated gentility dissolved entirely, leaving only the snarling, rotting monster.

  She struck at him blindly, more to force him into letting go than to try and kill him. The searing blade sliced through the corrupted flesh of his face like a hot knife through butter. Morgan shot to his feet. “Poison! Poison!” he screamed, his voice sounding like that of an old woman. The edges of the wound were already turning black and withering away from contact with the silver. “Unclean! Unclean!” he wailed, his voice cracking as it climbed the register. He clawed at the rapidly necrotizing tissue, desperately trying to keep the taint from spreading to the rest of his body. A thick, yellowish fluid welled up from between his fingers.

  As Sonja staggered to her feet, her muscles shrieking as circulation was restored, she realized for the first time that the room was rapidly filling with smoke. She attempted another lunge toward Morgan, only to see Nasakenai emerge from the choking fog and hurry his master out of the room. Morgan was escaping. She had to stop him. Kill him. Get it over with, once and for all. She tried to follow him, but quickly lost track of them in the chaos. Her head ached horribly and her eyes burned as if someone had rubbed hot ashes in them—then she realized the air surrounding her was filled with soot and swirling cinders. She took a few steps in the general direction of the door, only to drop to her knees, gagging on the smoke. As her body was wracked by a coughing fit, it suddenly occurred to her how quiet it was inside her head. The Other’s needling voice, her unwanted, constant companion for decades, was strangely silent. She moved cautiously, as if probing a sore tooth with her tongue. Could it be that Morgan had somehow managed to destroy it?

  No such luck, the Other whispered, its voice weaker than it had been in years. Don’t forget: you owe me one.

  Sonja dragged herself to her feet, coughing violently as she struggled to pull oxygen from the smoke-filled room. She staggered into the hallway, now almost obscured by billowing smoke. She could hear the roar of fire and the laughter of children. The house shook like a dog shaking itself dry as Ghost Trap’s west wing collapsed into its cellar, knocking her to the floor. She lay there, dazed, wondering whether she would suffocate or burn to death first. The sound of laughing children grew louder.

  A boy and girl, dressed in a sailor’s suit and a pinafore, emerged from the swirling smoke. She could hear the children’s long-dead, insectile voices buzzing in her ear, but could not make out what they were saying. The Seward children grabbed her by the hands and lifted her from the floor as if she weighed nothing, leading her through smoke-obscured rooms into a dark passage. Soon they were back within the tortured architecture of Ghost Trap’s outer house. As the Seward children hurried her through a series of hidden passages and interconnected rooms, Sonja was only dimly aware that her feet were no longer touching the floor.

  Suddenly there was a desperate banshee wail, and their way was blocked by a hulking grotesque with two heads. The ghost-children deftly yanked their dazed charge out of the path of a large, blood-spattered ax, which bit deep into the floorboards. The gibbering, two-headed creature wrenched its weapon free from the splintered wood and lifted it aloft, only to freeze upon hearing the sound of a woman’s laughter—light, merry, free—echoing through the empty rooms. The creature paused to listen, its twisted, bat-snouted face grimacing.

  Mrs. Seward’s ghost materialized beside that of her killer, grabbing the smaller of the two heads by its hair. The larger, deformed head squealed like a frightened piglet as she began to pull, flailing ineffectively at its attacker with its ax-hand. There was a muffled, sucking sound, like someone pulling a boot free of thick mud, as the shoulders and torso of the late Creighton Seward emerged from the apparition’s leprous skin.

  The deformed head shrieked even louder than before, its clawed feet drumming against the bare boards like a petulant child throwing a tantrum, but to no avail: Mrs. Seward was not to be denied the reclamation of her husband. With a final, mighty tug, Seward’s naked body was freed from that of its demonic twin. The dead man shivered like a newborn foal and threw his arms around his murdered wife, his face pressed against her bosom. Robbed of its unwilling host, the parasitic demon collapsed like a gutted scarecrow, its corpus returning to formless ectoplasm.

  Sonja stared at the embracing couple, reunited for the first time since that horrible night in 1907, when Creighton Seward, in a moment of weakness, made an unwise bargain in a bid for artistic genius.

  Mrs. Seward, her face no longer bearing the horrific mark of her mutilation, then rose and wrapped her spectral arms about Sonja, brushing her translucent lips against her cheek as she enveloped her.

  Suddenly Sonja found herself hurtling through room after room as if shot from a cannon, surrounded on all sides by crashing walls and collapsing floors as Ghost Trap’s unhallowed architecture collapsed in upon itself. She saw the stained glass window a split second before she was catapulted through it, and sent sailing through the air to land in the tangled, thorny embrace of an overgrown rosebush.

  Dazed and badly stunned, Sonja heard yet another of Ghost Trap’s chimneys tumble down onto the ground next to her in a thunderclap of bricks. She realized she was in extreme danger of the exterior wall collapsing on top of her if she did not move, but could not find it in her to care. Morgan had escaped. After all those years spent tracking him, she had finally had him where she wanted him onl
y to have him escape. She’d been so close, only to fail at her ultimate goal. Anise and Fell were dead; Morgan had disappeared into the shadows once more. Who cared whether she lived or died—or

  Would even notice?

  Suddenly a shadowy figure loomed over her, filling her vision. “Sonja! Thank God you’re alive!”

  She squinted up at the figure bending over her. His face was smeared with soot, he reeked of smoke, and he looked like someone had whacked him in the head with a golf club. She thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.

  “Palmer?”

  “It ain’t the Easter Bunny, baby!” He laughed as he kissed her blood-smeared brow.

  Once they were a safe distance away, they turned to watch the house death throes. “Look,” whispered Palmer, pointing at the smoke and sparks drifting heavenward.

  Sonja watched as the pellucid outlines of the Seward family ascended the currents, followed by an equally pale and familiar figure with long, flowing hair. Accompanying them was the shade of a moon-faced man in a flapping white coat, holding a deformed infant cradled in his arms. Within seconds they were gone, lost among the smoke and soot and lightening sky.

  “I guess I should ask you why you’re not on a plane to the Yucatan right now, but I’m not,” she said wearily, as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here, Palmer. You up to driving back?”

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to hoof it into town,” he replied, pointing to the few tons of fireplace that now covered both of their vehicles. “Maybe we can pick up a ride into San Francisco from there.”

  She groaned and took his hand. “I guess we better start walkin’ then, huh?”

  As they made their way down the driveway towards the county road that lead out of the valley, there came the crunch of tires on gravel. Sonja and Palmer turned in time to see vintage Rolls with heavily tinted windows bearing down on them, Nasakenai behind the wheel, one side of his head swaddled in sooty bandages. Without thinking, Palmer threw his arms around Sonja and dove into a nearby ditch as the Rolls rocketed past, spewing gravel in its wake.